Three Greek Banks Eye Acquiring Crédit Agricole’s Greek Unit

Greece’s three biggest lenders – National Bank of Greece, Alpha Bank and Eurobank EFG have shown interest in buying Credit Agricole SA’s (ACA) Greek unit. Crédit Agricole invited local banks to submit offers for a majority stake in Emporiki earlier this month as fears mounted of a run on Greek banks.

Potential bidders for Emporiki have already asked the Hellenic Financial Stability fund for permission to use part of the €18bn of capital disbursed to the country’s four largest lenders in May as bridge capital to raise their capital adequacy ratio to 8 per cent so that they can regain access to European Central Bank funding.

The decision to sell Emporiki, Greece’s fifth largest bank by assets, comes as a blow to the new coalition government that took office last week pledging to keep the country in the euro zone and turn its economy around by 2014, Financial Times reported.

Emporiki

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